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I have a new story out! It’s part of a truly gorgeous and exciting project: New Fairy Tales: Essays and Stories, which brings together original literary fairy tales and academic essays on the fairy tale form around the world. I am itching to get my fingers on my contributor copy. In the meantime, I wanted to let you know that you can get it at Amazon UK and Amazon US; I’m told other outlets are to follow.

My contribution is called ‘The Sea in the Hat’, and it starts like this:

They said she was the best fishwife in the market. Not the loudest, or the strongest, or the sharpest-tongued: simply, her fish were the best. She only came once a week, and when she did, you couldn’t get them fatter, couldn’t get them fuller-flavored. What was her secret? She had given her nights over to studying the sea, straining to understand the waves. The waves speak a flummoxing language, their slip-slap voices always folding over, one into the next. But the fishwife sat up, under the moon, listening until she recognized certain strands of their chatter. Where to fish and when to fish—that’s what she heard, between the fall and the drag. When she slept, the waves muttered on, and she dreamed the things they spoke of: deep fish, ones she would never catch, fish with lights in their mouths, fish with horns and antlers, fish of shadow, fish of glass.

With thanks to editors John Patrick Pazdziora and Defne Çizakça for putting together such a wonderful thing, and the kind friends who beta-read the tale for me.

Over the last few months Claire Trévien and I have been busy behind the scenes putting together the inaugural issue of Verse Kraken: The Magazine of Hybrid Art, and today we are THRILLED to be launching it. The online version is up on the magazine website, and the offline version – a limited edition treasure box of poetry, art and other magic – will be available to buy at our launch party tonight (there are still advance tickets left if you’d like to come!).

I feel a bit like we’ve made something quite special. There are video poems, concrete poems, audio pieces, art, and a hypertext story-game – and that’s just to mention a few of the things in the issue. There was so much that surprised and delighted us in the submissions. I’m so excited to be sharing them with the world.

None of this would have been possible without the support and enthusiasm of our friends, generous Kickstarter backers, and brilliant contributors. Thank you.

Hey, Internet! I’ve teamed up with the dashing and brilliant Claire Trévien to make a magazine. It’s called Verse Kraken, and it’s a place for weird, interstitial, experimental, multi-media, collaborative and other not-quite-usual stuff.

And it is currently OPEN TO SUBMISSIONS for issue one, scheduled for summer 2013. What are we looking for? See above. Basically – writing/art/photography/film/animation/music/hybrid-offshoots-thereof/other that in some way plays with form, style, genre, and/or engages with thematic borders and in-betweens.

For our first issue, we’re asking for submissions in response to one of the three ‘spurs’ currently on our website. These are things we’ve selected from the public domain, which we feel have loads of potential for interesting riffs or reinterpretations.

We’ve had some great stuff in the inbox so far, the majority of it traditional poetry. So if you want a tip: try us with other media, or interesting combinations!

We’ll close to submissions on the 31st of March. Send us your strangest!

This is my first professional fiction credit, and I’m thrilled that it’s in such a splendid magazine – one that’s published some of my favourite short story writers including Yoon Ha Lee and Aliette de Bodard, to name just two.

‘Boat in Shadows, Crossing’ is set in my weird fantasy city The Town Where Salt-Plums Grow, a setting which has been mulling and mutating in my dreams since I was 14 or so. It’s a story about love, ghosts, transformation, and a predatory boat. It starts:

First up is a Penning Perfumes night at the Clerkenwell Tales bookshop in London, on November 28th. If you’re intrigued by the idea of a night in which poetry and scent share the spotlight, please come! I’ll be reading my Narcisse-Noir-flavoured piece, alongside some wonderful poets, and there will be a brand new poetry-inspired perfume to sample. Here’s the poster:

AAAAAAAND, to make things a whole lot less London-centric, Penning Perfumes is going on tour in the new year – to Oxford, Birmingham, Manchester and Bristol. There will be a mix of poets from the original project and new voices in each city – here’s the full schedule and line-up. I’ll be reading in Bristol on February 27th.

I’ll also be reading at Pigeon Poetry: The Winter Gents on December 15th, at the Poetry Café in London. This is a lovely, intimate night run by the cross-genre TREMers Theatre Company – I read at their first poetry night back in June and it was very special, and I can’t think of anything better to do on a cold winter’s night that cosy up in a warmly lit basement and share words.

I’m running a one-day fiction writing workshop in Bangkok this Saturday – come along if you’re in town!

It’s at the British Club, starting at 10 a.m., and is for beginners and more experienced writers alike. We’ll be exploring the fiction writing process from inspiration to first draft and beyond, and by the end of the day workshop members will have started developing a new piece of fiction.

Practical stuff: the British Club is at the end of Silom soi 18, and the guard will let you in if you say what you’re there for. Food and drink can be bought throughout the day with coupons available at reception. If you’re planning on coming, please email me!

There’s also a new review of the book out from the Little Red Reviewer, who has nice things to say about my story, and the anthology as a whole.

A final bit of awesome news: thanks to Mike and Anita Allen’s tremendous fundraising work on Kickstarter, there’s going to be a pro-paying Clockwork Phoenix 4! And more – check it out.
There are good things afoot in the short speculative fiction world.

On Tuesday night we launched the Penning Perfumes anthology. A new kind of enchantment: roomful of poetry and perfume lovers, sharing their crafts, finding intersections between the two. I opened the night with my Narcisse Noir-inspired poem ‘Ryhme of the Manic Pixie Dream-Crone’, which was fun, but the best part was for sure listening to all the other poets’ pieces and sniffing the scents that went with them. Listening to fragrance and smelling words.

The book is now available to buy, and for a limited time will come with a free scent pen – containing either a perfume that inspired a poem, or a perfume inspired by a poem. And it’s only £5! Click here to order.

This was a delicious, magic-laced, interstital wonder-project, and hopefully just the start. My thanks to Claire Trevien and Odette Toilette for dreaming it up, Nick Murray for making such a beautiful book, and everyone who participated in any way.

I’m very proud to have my poem ‘Terrunform’ reprinted in Here, We Cross, a collection of queer and genderfluid poetry from Stone Telling, edited by Rose Lemberg and published by Stone Bird Press. It’s lovely, look:

If a collection of queer speculative poems from diverse voices appeals to you (as it should!), you can get it at Amazon US; if you need further encouragement, here’s the Table of Contents:

Speaking of ‘Terrunform’, check out the AWESOME CAKE that my amazing friend Eleanor Turney made for my birthday, illustrating said poem:

And speaking of Rose Lemberg, you should definitely check out The Moment of Change, her new anthology of feminist speculative poetry. It has poems from some wonderful friends including Alex Dally MacFarlane, Hel Gurney and Koel Mukherjee, as well as some of my favourite poets including Amal El-Mohtar, Catherynne M. Valente and Sonya Taaffe. And Ursula K. Le Guin! And lots more! I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy. Available from Amazon US or Aqueduct Press.

On a final poetry note, I’m reading at the Scratch+Sniff Penning Perfumes event tomorrow night in London, at which the Penning Perfumes pamphlet will be launched – I’m told the event’s sold out now, but I’ll post more about the pamphlet when it’s available to buy.

Penning Perfumes is featured in the Independent today! So nice to see such a cool project get some high-profile coverage. I’m one of the “dozen poets” mentioned; our poems are all now turned in and our mystery scents revealed. It’s very interesting to read the blurbs for my perfume and see where my poem’s narrative intersects with the perfumer’s narrative, and where they diverge.

To see/hear/smell the results, come to the ‘read and sniff’ even in London’s Book Club, 12th June. Book here!